Guide 3

Introduction
As I stay up late into the night burning the midnight oil (for no effect, I just like to burn things…) I find myself thinking, “What the hell is the point of this part of the guide?”, now I think many of you will come over to this section first, mostly because it’s very general, because honestly not one person can fit all the Rping dos and don’ts into one guide, however this guide in my opinion is generally “RP guidelines on light.”, it’ll give you a basic understanding of what to do and not to do in an RP. I hope that if anything this convinces you to read the rest of the RP guidelines done by authors way more talented then myself (except Dodd, that guys a fucking hack), so with that said, I give you “RPing dos and don’ts).

Bullshit
Merriam Webster defines bullshitting way better than I could.

QUOTE (‘Webster’) 1 usually vulgar: to talk foolishly, boastfully, or idly 2 usually vulgar: to engage in a discursive discussion transitive verb, usually vulgar: to talk nonsense to especially with the intention of deceiving or misleading

My favorite definition is obviously the first, to be frank though avoid bullshit, it is your worse enemy and very easy to fall into the trap. Now here we go, we’ve got a good thread, lots of volume, lots of character development, but here it goes, it just goes on and on and on and on and on. This continues to the point where half the members are just like “What the fuck are they talking about?!”, because eventually when a thread goes on for that long, 10% of the time the characters will develop and then 90% of the time…the posts are pointless!

If you find yourself stepping into a bit of bullshit it’s alright, you can spray it off with a hose, if you find yourself up to your chest in bullshit…well get the fuck out of the thread and actually do something with your character! We support meaningful activity and if you can’t do anything with your character (other than bullshit), kill your character, it’s easier for us all.

How to avoid bullshitting? Well I’ll admit it’s hard, we all grow accustomed to one thread, and it’s hard to leave when you’ve no clue of what to do. A good way to do this is to plan out what your character is doing, is he going into this thread to die? To get a rest? To kill? Serve your purpose and do what comes at you, do not post for the sake of posting, the quality goes down and it leads to really…uninteresting posts. So yeah, planned story lines are defiantly a way to stop the bullshit.

Another simple way that all of us can do is look at the function of this post, if there is none, bullshit is on the horizon, either wait it out for a few posts until it gets interesting, make it interesting, or get the fuck out of the thread and fast!

God-Moding
So you’re in this thread right and there is a fight going on! YES! You’ve escaped the bullshit! However you still see people faking enthusiasm for your post, you decide it has to be since your character…really sucks at fighting! The plan? Fucking pwn your opponent! So, Handler A posts a post with Character A sending an uppercut towards Character B, Handler B in responses causes Character B to go super saiyan and send a spirit bomb out to crush Character A.

Handler C, D, and E however are just going “What the fuck just happened?”, so they have to find a strategy to deal with this atrocity.

Handler C’s strategy is as follows: Ignore the spirit bomb and continue Rping, however if he was in Handler A’s position…well things could get confusing, only go with this option if Handler B is reasonable…if not you’re fucked, so only go with this option if you know…you’re not dealing with an overbearing idiot.

Handler D’s strategy is to acknowledge this…this leads to us having a super saiyan on the island, obviously not something we want, ALWAYS avoid this option unless it’s something really stupid and has no effect on the general plays on the island (an example would be when Jacob Starr took the gun back from Amanda Jones in “Though we may not survive it…”), if it comes down to either letting a case of minor god-moding pass or halting the thread, always choose the first choice, that’s just intelligent Rping.

Handler E, now here is the most simple and productive way to deal with god-moders, in fact Handler E should get a fucking noble prize for thinking of it! He contacts the mods and they handle it, limited effort on your part and the mods actually do what they’ve been put there for, to make things easier on the forum. If you can’t get Handler B to erase his post then ALWAYS go with this option, 100% of the time it works every time.

Mind Reading
Mind reading. Oh Jesus Christ, you aren’t Miss Cleo, neither is your character. Avoid this. Don’t think about it. Don’t acknowledge it. In fact punch someone in the face via internet connection if they practice it. This is the most subtle form of RP don’ts, it can sometimes even be masked under a good post…however it is one of the most n00best things you can do.

Remember, just because you’re aware of a situation doesn’t mean that your character is aware as well, examples being “I just get a bad feeling from him.” while meeting the villain at best, at worse it leads to “OMFG YOU’RE THAT GUY THAT KILLED MY FRIENDS!” when all the character said was “Heeeeeeeeeey”…the Fonz did not kill your friends…and even if he did if your character wasn’t there he wouldn’t know. Now the character may know that the Fonz did kill his character, but would he know how the fonz looked like? Sure. If the Fonz was in your school, but otherwise…no you wouldn’t.

Mind reading is the hardest to avoid, since usually you know so much about what everyone around you as planned that it’s hard to avoid your character mentioning it, however if you try your best to avoid this horrid Rping habit then SOTF is guaranteed to improve in quality.

((Subject to editing by all moderators and myself.))